Pittsburgh’s City Council ordered Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to attend
a meeting today to hash out a plan to avoid a state takeover of
the underfunded municipal pension, which may more than double its
cost to taxpayers.

A vote to compel Ravenstahl to come before the council’s finance
committee followed about six hours of debate on shoring up the
pension system using parking fees. The retirement plan has about
$325 million in assets to cover $1 billion in promised benefits,
according to a consultant’s report. The city has until Dec. 31 to
show the state how it will bolster the plan.

“It’s merely an accounting gimmick to get past Dec. 31,” said
Scott Kunka, Ravenstahl’s finance director, on the proposal to
use parking fees over the next 30 years to support the pension
system. “It’s just a bad concept,” he said.

Pittsburgh, whose pension problem was called a “financial
Armageddon” by two city councilors yesterday, joins cities such
as San Diego and states such as Illinois and New Jersey that may
cut services or raise taxes to meet ballooning retirement costs.
Those states and 18 others skipped payments or underfunded their
retirement systems from 2007 to 2009, according to an October
report from Loop Capital Markets in Chicago.

Pittsburgh’s pension system includes three retirement plans for
about 7,000 active and retired firefighters and government
workers. Under Pennsylvania law, the state must begin taking
control if the city’s obligations are less than 50 percent funded
as of Dec. 31.

Raising taxes is not the answer. It would encourage both white
flight and business flight. Higher property taxes would cause
more bankruptcies from people already on the edge, barely able to
get by right now. Higher taxes certainly would do nothing to
attract business.

Gov.-elect Tom Corbett met today for the first time with the
small army of volunteer advisers who form his extended transition
team, but he remained tight-lipped about prospective Cabinet
appointments or his promised government belt-tightening.

Corbett characterized the collection of more than 400 business
leaders, veterans of past Republican administrations,
conservative activists, legislators and even a few Democrats as
"a fresh set of eyes" with which the architects of his
administration can size up state government and recommend new
ways of doing things.

He is scheduled to be sworn in Jan. 18 as the successor to
Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who is stepping down after serving
the maximum two consecutive terms.

The transition team is divided by subject into 17 committees. One
panel is assigned to the budget, pensions and revenue, for
example, while others focus on topics that include health and
aging, education, criminal justice and economic development. The
committees will scrutinize 25 state departments and agencies,
transition officials said.

The committees' final reports are due by the second week of
January, Corbett said.

One Democratic transition team member at Tuesday's meeting was
state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams of Philadelphia, who finished
third in a four-way Democratic gubernatorial primary in May.
Corbett has praised Williams' advocacy of expanding "school
choice" — an umbrella term for vouchers, charter schools and
other taxpayer-financed alternatives to public schools.

The city should be talking with Tom Corbett's transition team
regarding bankruptcy right now. I bet the governor would consider
it. Bankruptcy and killing untenable public union contracts, not
higher taxes is all that can save Pittsburgh.

The mayor and the city council should have one master, the people
of Pittsburgh, not the police and fire unions.

Pittsburgh's city council's obligations to the city are to
produce the most services for city residents at the least cost.
Public unions provide the fewest services at the most cost. It is
time to put an end to this widespread practice that threatens to
bankrupt numerous cities in the country this year.